02 August 2003

I used to love creatively "nesting" parentheses in sentences in e-mail. I still do it occasionally. While most people become very terse in e-mail, to me the ease of typing as opposed to writing and the psychological freedom of e-mail can tend to make me even more loquacious than I am verbally. In today's Guardian, the gentle humour column of Smallweed played around with nested quotation marks. I'll just quote the last sentence, but I will not add extra quote marks, so as not to steal Smallweed's thunder: "Mr Smallweed told me today: 'George Monbiot wrote in today's Guardian, "As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory, 'Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "To the captives, 'come out', and to those in darkness, 'be free'. " ' " ' " If newspaper history wasn't made by Monbiot on Tuesday, I trust that it has been now.